Binary minds: The post-human era of black and white thinking
“Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not remember the cosmos.” — Donna Haraway
Lately, I’ve been grappling with a sense of unease when it comes to engaging on social platforms. It feels like with each passing day, we’re pushed into residing within the echo chambers that we’ve collectively constructed — you’re either in this camp or that one, and having ideas that exist in the spaces in between often results in a barrage of comments from opposing sides. The heightened political division that we’re witnessing is eerily similar to the black-and-white dichotomies in our digital age. Just as our social media timelines transform into battlegrounds, polarizing individuals into distinct left or right camps, the world of computing offers a parallel.
Remember the early days of digital media, when we’d have to pick sides between VHS and Betamax, You’re either team Jennifer or team Angelina, the good guy or the bad guy, or in our more modern era, between Android and iPhone? Perhaps there was never a hope for Blackberry, after all — but I digress. Similarly, in the international arena, the Israel-Palestinian conflict has increasingly been framed as an either-or situation, with many feeling the pressured to staunchly support one side, leaving little room for nuanced discourse or…
